Maharashtra: CM’s relief fund helps Nashik man get a heart transplant

A green corridor helped transport the heart 34km in 22 minutes

A 29-year-old man from Nashik received a heart through a transplant financed by the chief minister’s relief fund.

The patient, who has dilated cardiomyopathy, where the heart’s capacity to pump blood decreases, got the transplant from a 25-year-old man from Colaba, who was declared brain-dead after a fatal Haemorrhage.

The donor’s family also donated the kidneys, which helped two other end-stage kidney patients in the city. Doctors form Fortis Hospital, Mulund, said the recipient was waitlisted for three weeks. The transplant team retrieved the heart from Wockhardt Hospital, Mumbai Central, on Thursday morning. With the help of a green corridor, the team reached Fortis Hospital at 4.52am, covering 34km in 22 minutes. A team of doctors from Jaslok Hospital retrieved one kidney and a patient at Wockhardt received the other. Hospital officials said that surgery was financed by the CM’s Relief Fund as the patient was from a poor family.

“The surgeries cost about Rs 20 lakh and the patient was from an underprivileged background. They had approached the CM for financial help and the state is slated to bare the expenses,” the officials said.

“This young donor’s family deserves highest appreciation for having saved multiple lives through their noble gesture – they help us build a strong testimony, that patients with end-stage heart failure have hope. Our young recipient is now stable and will be observed for the next 48-72 hours in the ICU,” said Dr Anvay Mule, head of the cardiac transplant team at Fortis.

This was the city’s 37th heart transplant surgery since August 2015, and the second heart transplant surgery of 2017.